nytimes.com— President Barack Obama said Tuesday he'll bring in high-tech bounty hunters to help root out health care fraud, grabbing a populist idea with bipartisan backing in his final push to overhaul the system.
Mar 10, 2010View in Crawl 4
Great...another "nobody messes with Joe" moment. Since Joe (Biden) has done such an effective job ensuring the stimulus funds are being spent effectively...I'm sure this will be just as ineffective.Let me guess, Obama has some friends who will receive big contracts from this.
Obama is such a twit. When will he grow up and think and act like an adult? This is change he can believe in, I guess. I hope he keeps making his speech a day program; best news for the opposition.
Great except for the part WHERE THIS WAS A REPUBLICAN IDEA, it was one of the ideas republicans proposed for reform during the Clinton years. The same for Individual mandates you know the same thing republicans are now against but they were proposing before because now Obama is for it.
He is already using members of his own staff to ruthlessly go after those who do not agree with him.Thug politics is his game, and all he knows.He thinks if he gives enough smooth speeches he can keep fooling everyone, like he did in the election.Hmm, why is he all of a sudden interested in stopping fraud when it is already rampant with medicare and medicaid and he is not doing anything more with those or the myriad other government entitlements that are fraud ridden?
Disagree with Moulin. Its a common misconception of the public to think that dishonest doctors are responsible for huge amounts of graft. Altho fraud certainly occurs among doctors the biggest scams are perpetrated by patients themselves and insurance companies. Moulin didn't mention the literally millions of Medicaid patients clogging up our ER's with colds and sore throats or the equally large numbers who visit doctors, not with genuine illness but just to have someone intelligent to talk to. And all this simply because its free to them. Or the scads of others who get Medicaid illegally by means such as living with a common law husband but refusing to get married or declare the man so that they can continue to draw medicaid and avoid having to work or those large numbers who do indeed work but at day or contract labor and don't report the income so as to qualify for medicaid, foodstamps and other forms of welfare.. Not to mention the thousands of people who feign chronic pain or other disability when no source or pathology can be found...and in many states, with persistance, these people can oftentimes get disability pensions for the rest of their lives. Maybe these dishonest yacht owning doctors Moulin speaks of exist but I haven't known many and I'm a doc! Well maybe on 60 minutes...I might ask Moulin if you think that these huge numbers of doctors are gonna be scamming the insurance companies then how can you trust something as precious as your health to them? Isn't that one of the reasons why society makes them go thru ridiculously long training periods? To aquire advanced knowledge, inspire trust and weed out those lacking motivation or ethics? If you can't give any trust here then who can you trust? The other truely large area of money drain isn't quite fraud but it is wrong nevertheless and it is huge. Its the scads of bureaucrats working for insurance companies that aren't really earning their wage but simply rejecting claims based on a minor ommisions on an insurance form. Thereby delaying claims that, multiplied by thousands, mean millions drawing interest and therefore increased profits and wages for themselves and their coworkers. The insurance companies advertise that they only made a profit of 4% in a year. While this may be true it doesn't account for the huge employed infrastructure that gets a good wage and does nothing meaningful! Almost half the healthcare dollar now goes to people (govt, insurance and other office workers and malpractice lawyers) who have no part in the actual care of the patient. While there are many other sources of fraud in our medical system, including doctors and especially including doctor wannabees such as chiropracters, naturepaths, nurse practitioners, etc. there are five actual super causes of increased costs in healthcare today. They are:1. Expensive new procedures requiring large numbers of highly trained personel operating state-of-the-art equipment for time-consuming periods. ie. transplantation, open heart surgery using cardiac bypass, etc.2. Large numbers of illegal alliens and refugees receiving state-of-the-art medical care (operations, neonatal intensive care nursing) on an emergency basis and then skipping back to their home country or becoming lost in our own system and never paying their bill. 3. Other newly invented ways of keeping sickly people alive longer (not necessarily with a good quality of life) when in former times they died earlier.4. Defensive medicine...A practice, driven by flashy trial lawyers, (John Edwards comes to mind) where doctors order borderline or esoteric tests (often expensive) to guard against the one-in-a-million chance from some extremely rare disease in order to protect against getting wiped out financilly and professionally from a lawsuit.5. Huge numbers of people using the medical system but who are lost in our society from a billing standpoint. People working at day labor and making a living, but in a position to never be compelled to pay for their medical care, ie not easily traceable or accountable thru the court system. These are the people undergoing expensive care who, once cured, skip town, work for cash and have nothing to attach, and generally live in the undercurrent of society and are never heard from again. This is more common than you may think.
kingatrockMar 10, 2010
He did what?! Well, I'll have to wait until the tv entertainment news shows tell me what to think.
elliotysMar 10, 2010
Good, I think it is particularly distasteful to steal from health care system. . . which is why I am not a fan of private insurance companies.
Closed AccountMar 10, 2010
Great...another "nobody messes with Joe" moment. Since Joe (Biden) has done such an effective job ensuring the stimulus funds are being spent effectively...I'm sure this will be just as ineffective.Let me guess, Obama has some friends who will receive big contracts from this.
falconearMar 10, 2010
Obama: And I want them alive! NO disintegrations!
elranzerMar 10, 2010
I'd suggest Roy Ashburn but creeps like him just out themselves eventually.
mrzaikoMar 10, 2010
So he got, Boba Fett and Lizard guy!
monvalleyMar 11, 2010
Obama is such a twit. When will he grow up and think and act like an adult? This is change he can believe in, I guess. I hope he keeps making his speech a day program; best news for the opposition.
itsrattlesnakeMar 11, 2010
As you wish . . .
etubruteMar 11, 2010
Great except for the part WHERE THIS WAS A REPUBLICAN IDEA, it was one of the ideas republicans proposed for reform during the Clinton years. The same for Individual mandates you know the same thing republicans are now against but they were proposing before because now Obama is for it.
partrowMar 14, 2010
He is already using members of his own staff to ruthlessly go after those who do not agree with him.Thug politics is his game, and all he knows.He thinks if he gives enough smooth speeches he can keep fooling everyone, like he did in the election.Hmm, why is he all of a sudden interested in stopping fraud when it is already rampant with medicare and medicaid and he is not doing anything more with those or the myriad other government entitlements that are fraud ridden?
ed57Mar 22, 2010
Disagree with Moulin. Its a common misconception of the public to think that dishonest doctors are responsible for huge amounts of graft. Altho fraud certainly occurs among doctors the biggest scams are perpetrated by patients themselves and insurance companies. Moulin didn't mention the literally millions of Medicaid patients clogging up our ER's with colds and sore throats or the equally large numbers who visit doctors, not with genuine illness but just to have someone intelligent to talk to. And all this simply because its free to them. Or the scads of others who get Medicaid illegally by means such as living with a common law husband but refusing to get married or declare the man so that they can continue to draw medicaid and avoid having to work or those large numbers who do indeed work but at day or contract labor and don't report the income so as to qualify for medicaid, foodstamps and other forms of welfare.. Not to mention the thousands of people who feign chronic pain or other disability when no source or pathology can be found...and in many states, with persistance, these people can oftentimes get disability pensions for the rest of their lives. Maybe these dishonest yacht owning doctors Moulin speaks of exist but I haven't known many and I'm a doc! Well maybe on 60 minutes...I might ask Moulin if you think that these huge numbers of doctors are gonna be scamming the insurance companies then how can you trust something as precious as your health to them? Isn't that one of the reasons why society makes them go thru ridiculously long training periods? To aquire advanced knowledge, inspire trust and weed out those lacking motivation or ethics? If you can't give any trust here then who can you trust? The other truely large area of money drain isn't quite fraud but it is wrong nevertheless and it is huge. Its the scads of bureaucrats working for insurance companies that aren't really earning their wage but simply rejecting claims based on a minor ommisions on an insurance form. Thereby delaying claims that, multiplied by thousands, mean millions drawing interest and therefore increased profits and wages for themselves and their coworkers. The insurance companies advertise that they only made a profit of 4% in a year. While this may be true it doesn't account for the huge employed infrastructure that gets a good wage and does nothing meaningful! Almost half the healthcare dollar now goes to people (govt, insurance and other office workers and malpractice lawyers) who have no part in the actual care of the patient. While there are many other sources of fraud in our medical system, including doctors and especially including doctor wannabees such as chiropracters, naturepaths, nurse practitioners, etc. there are five actual super causes of increased costs in healthcare today. They are:1. Expensive new procedures requiring large numbers of highly trained personel operating state-of-the-art equipment for time-consuming periods. ie. transplantation, open heart surgery using cardiac bypass, etc.2. Large numbers of illegal alliens and refugees receiving state-of-the-art medical care (operations, neonatal intensive care nursing) on an emergency basis and then skipping back to their home country or becoming lost in our own system and never paying their bill. 3. Other newly invented ways of keeping sickly people alive longer (not necessarily with a good quality of life) when in former times they died earlier.4. Defensive medicine...A practice, driven by flashy trial lawyers, (John Edwards comes to mind) where doctors order borderline or esoteric tests (often expensive) to guard against the one-in-a-million chance from some extremely rare disease in order to protect against getting wiped out financilly and professionally from a lawsuit.5. Huge numbers of people using the medical system but who are lost in our society from a billing standpoint. People working at day labor and making a living, but in a position to never be compelled to pay for their medical care, ie not easily traceable or accountable thru the court system. These are the people undergoing expensive care who, once cured, skip town, work for cash and have nothing to attach, and generally live in the undercurrent of society and are never heard from again. This is more common than you may think.